Aviding Amazon at Christmas (Or anytime)!

I am sure you have seen and read of the huge boom in internet shopping this Christmas. Clearly a trend that will continue as that tax dodging, union busting megalith Amazon has destroyed large numbers of the independent book and music shops that would have fulfilled many Christmas present orders.

As a lefty when Amazon first appeared it seemed like a great thing. I could get some of the more obscure left field books and music that I had been looking for a lot more easily, cheaper and swifter than ordering through my local book or record store. However it is now clear that Amazon is in the vanguard of the neo-liberal onslaught.

Without tax there is nothing to fund our schools, hospitals and public services, but Amazon is the colossus of tax avoiders. Amazon's UK subsidiary (which also includes brands Lovefilm.com, Kindle, Audible.com) paid £3.2m in corporate taxes in 2012 on sales of £4.3bn - a rate of less than 0.1%. How can a high street store paying council tax, rent and all the costs that go with having such a presence compete?
And it is not just tax the working conditions for Amazon staff are diabolical. Now the magazine that has been leading the campaign against Amazon is twenty years old this year. Ethical Consumer has been advising us how to spend our money as wisely as possible so that our consumption matches our values. I think at a time when we are under such concentrated attack we should think very carefully about who gets every hard earned penny we have to spend.  

Margaret Hodge, who frankly seems reborn as Chair of the public accounts committee has been a leading figure in the campaign for shoppers to boycott Amazon. Now she has been joined by MPs Natascha Engel, Meg Hillier, Margaret Hodge, John McDonnell, Michael Meacher, Austin Mitchell, Grahame Morris and Dennis Skinner.

The important thing about the Ethical Consumer campaign however is that do not just say stop buying from Amazon they also answer the ‘so where do we shop instead’ question? Which is just where Ethical Consumer magazine comes in like ‘Which’ with ethics factored in it helps you decide who to give your custom to for a huge range of products and services that we all buy.

It is an independent, not-for-profit, multi-stakeholder co-operative with open membership, founded in 1989 and based in Manchester. Their income comes entirely from, reader subscriptions (50%), consultancy work for campaign groups and ethical organisations (30%), and adverts from ethically vetted companies, grants and other income (20%).
Nowadays it seems everyone has their own set of ethics and beliefs, so they've developed the world's most sophisticated yet simple personal ethical rating system to give you the information you need, based on detailed research of over 40,000 companies, brands and products. What is more you can personalise their  ethical product guides to reflect the issues that you find most important - be that animal testing, climate change, sweatshop labour, GM crops, nuclear power or whatever.
Subscribers can also access detailed product & company information, plus hundreds of downloads. As a subscriber you get the UK's leading alternative consumer magazine, published 6 times a year which can be available as a paper copy delivered to your door, or as a flip-book or as a digital download. 
Consumer product labels now appear on an increasing number of ethical products and services; the Ethical Consumer Best Buy Label helps shoppers choose genuinely ethical products and services. It's a unique label that looks in detail at the ethical record of the company behind the product and the environmental and ethical record of the product itself.
I must admit my own ratings do not always coincide exactly with theirs but I always find out something interesting and it helps me to avoid making the enemy any stronger!!
Ethical Consumer is the brand name of the Ethical Consumer Research Association so that all their work is backed up by some excellent research into companies and their products. This is supported by the fact that they are a co-op. In October 2008 ECRA converted into a multi-stakeholder co-operative with worker members, and investor members.
Both classes of member are involved in decision-making and the election of Directors onto the Board.  The conversion was designed to give ECRA better access to external capital and skills – whilst retaining the not-for-profit and co-operative principles at its core. Because of the principle of open membership, any consumer able to make the minimum investment (currently £200) and who supports the objects of ECRA, can now become a member of the co-operative.

So maybe before you buy anything else your first Christmas gift to yourself should be a sub for ethical consumer so go to: http://www.ethicalconsumer.org . You may also like to include the essential Christmas present for all your anti-capitalist and radical co-operator friends the new book from Ethical Consumer and New Internationalist - 'People over Capital'. Edited by Ethical Consumer editor Rob Harrison and well reviewed in these pages.

Only after you have of course been to http://shop.morningstaronline.co.uk for all your stocking fillers!